Do reporters spin trial results \u2013 or do some reporters just not understand the science well enough to report results accurately?<\/p>\n
I was thumbing through Nature Reviews\/Cardiology<\/a><\/em> when I happened on this headline in the section on Research Highlights: Vorapaxar beneficial in setting of prior MI, but not in patients who have experienced stroke<\/em>. This long headline caught my attention because I thought that TRA 2P-TIMI 50<\/a>, the trial that is being reported, was positive at the cost of a substantially higher risk of bleeding.<\/p>\n Vorapaxar is a novel antiplatelet drug that Merck inherited from Schering-Plough. It selectively inhibits the actions of thrombin. TRA 2P-TIMI 50 showed that in patients with a history of MI, stroke or PVD, vorapaxar produced an absolute 1.2% reduction in the composite of death from cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction or stroke \u2013 and a 1.7% increase in moderate or severe bleeding and a 0.5% increase in intracranial bleeding.<\/p>\n With the disappointing TRACER study, which showed that in patients with acute coronary syndrome, this drug did not produce a significant reduction in\u00a0a composite of death from cardiovascular causes, myocardial infarction, stroke, recurrent ischemia with rehospitalization, or urgent coronary revascularization\u00a0and did significantly increase intracranial bleeding \u2013 this drug seems unlikely to garner much support.<\/p>\n In this context, the headline seems to be a little misleading. Is that really the major message from this trial? How do you know which research summaries you can trust? I\u2019d also like to hear from anyone who thinks I misinterpreted this trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do reporters spin trial results \u2013 or do some reporters just not understand the science well enough to report results accurately? I was thumbing through Nature Reviews\/Cardiology when I happened on this headline in the section on Research Highlights: Vorapaxar beneficial in setting of prior MI, but not in patients who have experienced stroke. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[495,1],"tags":[956,655],"class_list":["post-29336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anticoagulation-2","category-general","tag-media","tag-vorapaxar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}